Openings abound: new Archives and Research Center (ARC) addition Texas State University, San Marcos’s STAR Park; revamped Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in NY; renovated Shippensburg Public Library, PA; and more new construction and renovation news from the December 2017 issue of Library Journal.

John Bracken is the new executive director of DPLA, Davita Vance-Cooks steps down from the U.S. Government Publishing Office, and more new hires, promotions, retirements, and obituaries from the December 2017 issue of Library Journal.

With the recent introduction of iOS 11’s ARKit, Apple’s software development kit for creating AR apps, patrons will likely see a variety of new apps that will combine the virtual with the actual in useful and innovative ways. In this spotlight, we take a look at ARKit as well as some AR and VR (virtual reality) apps and services currently on the scene.

There was a clear need for collaborative and creative community spaces in the branches of Ontario’s Hamilton Public Library (HPL). We had two objectives: provide customers with the services and technology they couldn’t easily access at home and support the city’s growing arts and innovation community.

The need to reinvent public life has special relevance today, as too much civic discourse fails the civility test, threatening our ability to solve problems, much less build a better world. Libraries are stepping forward and actively working to find ways to foster deeper community engagement.

“When the sane are dealing with the insane, the burden is on the sane.” That was one of my father’s favorite axioms, especially after some family argument (or a few drinks). The rest of the family used the idea frequently to calm our angry discussions with one another or with our friends and adversaries.

The LJ Index is based on five types of per capita use generated by public libraries: visits, circulation, ecirculation, public access computer use, and program attendance. Star Library ratings of five, four, and three stars are awarded to libraries that generate the highest combined per capita outputs among their spending peers.

Whether or not your library has been given a Star rating, you can benefit from finding peers in your expenditure category and comparing statistics. For the scores for all libraries included in this round of the LJ Index, click through to download a spreadsheet of all libraries with LJ Index scores.